What you want, what you don't
by randomly
Summary: Post Reichenbach Sherlock. John lost the best friend he has, and he does not know how to cope. He begins seeing Sherlock's ghost, knowing too well it is not real but wishing it were. He is ripping apart at the seems. There's so much he doesn't understand.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** I haven't written much in ages now, have I? Well, I guess it's time. I'll try a rebound with this post Reichenbach BBC-Sherlock fic. I've just fallen so for the show that I had to - then again who hasn't...? I hope you like it - please tell me what you think if you read it so that I'll know whether to continue or not, yeah?

Oh, and as if you did not know - Sherlock does not in any way, shape or form belong to me. The original works belong to the fabulous author Arthur Conan Doyle, and the version that this fic is based on is property of BBC. Now that that's over, let's get started.

Love, Silly.

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><p><strong>What you want, what you don't.<strong>

**Chapter 1**

John is a doctor. He is a man, and a soldier - but firstly a doctor. It is his nature, so deeply ingrained in his being that it is man which has become second nature, not profession. It has gotten worse since that damned day he will not let himself think about because it will only do harm, and you have to live on. John is a doctor, and that is why he understands. That is why, when Sherlock appeared on the couch one day out of the blue, he did not acknowledge him. He did not talk back. He even tried to avoid looking, but the man moved with his gaze, making it rather difficult. If there was one thing the doctor in him did not want to admit it was that he coped so badly with his former flatmate's suicide that he had begun to hallucinate, but there was no other way to see the situation. He has considered getting help, but I know these are hallucinations, I know he's not really here, so I can handle it myself.

Day by day. That is how John Watson handles his life, always has. More than twenty-four hours in his head at any given time would make him feel the pressure of time, which scares him. Not many things do, but time, and increasingly the faux-Sherlock wandering about in his mind. He tells himself he should be able to handle the situation better - he's seen so many men, and quite a few friends, die before, some of them even in his arms - still... Still he kind of likes having the detective's ghost walking about, it makes the long, dark days easier to get through. Things aren't the same since he jumped. John still can't walk past that block, always detours. It has been hard settling back in to the apartment again as well - he even stayed at Harry's for a couple of days at her will before managing to go back at all. The place was, still is, almost all Sherlock's things. The army doc didn't own too many things, he'd been abroad for too long to bother, so he hadn't had much to contribute with interior-wise. Almost everything is still standing where it was before... It's been months and I still can't say it, think it. This isn't good. The only thing he's moved, the first thing he did when he returned to 221 b, Baker Street, was the microscope in the kitchen. It was where Sherlock had sat so often, and he just couldn''t stand the constant reminder that he is not there any longer. That he was no longer alive. That's how he puts it; Sherlock is no longer alive - still unable to phrase it any other way. Gone. Dead. He knows he should be there by now, that he should be able to face what has happened - it's what normal people do, but instead he had looked over at where the genius would sit with his microscope one day to once more see the emptiness there - only it wasn't empty. Sherlock had been sitting there, carelessly, giving him that quick, slightly menacing smile of his before returning to fiddling with some little thing on the table. I needed it to be you, Sherlock. I needed you to be back, but I knew you weren't. I knew it was all in my head, that I was breaking.

The good doctor has thought about going back to his therapist, but he won't. He's been to see her a couple of times after the death of his best friend, but found it of no help. When she tried to make him utter the words that Sherlock was really dead he stopped going at all. No, he'd said. He just couldn't. Can't. Then he told her he had no intention of returning, but not to worry, he wasn't going to harm himself.

Without Sherlock around, his life has become eerily hollow. Empty. No more excitement or strangeness, a complete lack of the eccentricity that the younger had brought with him to their friendship. Now it was only John and work and sleep. Sometimes he eats, but he skips most meals these days, having begun to pick up the habits of his dead friend. Oh, God, Sherlock, I miss you so much. Truth be told, Sherlock was the only best friend John had ever had. Sure, there had been friends and lovers and girlfriends before him, but Sherlock was the only best friend he ever had. Fuck. The ghost speaks to him sometimes, and he wants so terribly to return the conversation, but he can't allow himself. If he does, he knows he would only fall further into a world of dreams (or are they nightmares) and ghosts and things that cannot be. He still has people that care. Mrs. Hudson, DI Lestrade, Harry, Molly - heck, even Sally Donovan checks up on him every now and then. He goes out for beers with Lestrade every so often, has dinner with Mrs. Hudson most days, talks to the others a couple of times a months. Mostly, though, his life is an empty shell around him.

He has helped so many soldiers back to life both physically and mentally, but now, when he needs to help himself, he can't. Helping himself would mean moving past Sherlock, but he can not and will not do it. The gaping hole in his heart would not close so easily, of that he is sure. People wondered, some had even asked (and one of those ghastly, glossy magazines had gone as far as to print an article about) whether they had been a couple, romantically involved. John could not blame them, had he seen how he was coping (Oh, God, I'm so pathetic these days) he would have wondered himself, but all he could do was shake his head. No, we were not lovers. Not a couple. He was my best friend. He thinks back, remembering every detail and each single word spoken between them. Not in public, Sherlock. People might get the wrong idea...

It has been half a year now. Six months to the day, and it is one of those hellish days where everything seems dark and impossible. Every once in a while this happens. his chest feels heavy as a mountain and he won't bother getting out of bed. He calls the office to say he won't make it in, a discomfort not made any better by his ex-girlfriend Sarah being the one to pick up the phone. He mumbles what he called to say and is about to hang up when she speaks.

"John," she says. Her voice is soft and warm. "I'm worried about you. Are you all right?" She seems sincere, not just asking to see if he is still able to do his job, mentally speaking, but actual concern.

"Today? Not so much. In general I'm fine, though. Don't worry..." He hears her sighing on the other end. Imagines her shaking her head, remembers the flow of her hair.

"I do." His turn to sigh. "Let's go out for coffee after work tomorrow. I wan to make sure you're really fine."

"Ok." Hang up. Beep. Fine. Bit of an overstatement. Coping badly, more like it.

He falls asleep.

When he wakes up he feels a presence. He looks around the room, but Sherlock is not there. Quick deduction; there is someone in the flat. The soldier pulls himself out of bed, feeling the weight of the world crashing down on his bones. It takes him a couple of minutes, but eventually he manages to get on his feet and walks slowly down the stairs to the sitting room. He feels a wave of unease at the figure posed in what used to be Sherlock's chair, same upright pose and a faint familiar likeness.

"Mycroft?"

"Hello, Watson... John."

"What are you doing here, Mycroft?" The fact that the two of them started out rather unpleasantly has never quite been righted.

"Now, now," The remaining Holmes brother says in his typical, slightly threatening politician's voice. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. It is, after all, my foolish little brother's fault that you are... below par - shall we say - lately." It feels like every atom freezes.

"Your foolish little brother would still be alive if it weren't for you!" John snaps. Every last bit of composure and calm built up by his years in military service discarded. There was a limit to how much even he could take in a day, and Mycroft's statement had flooded that pool. He feels tears press on the back of his eyes.

"The one thing I truly regret." Mycroft sighs. His words sound like riddles.

"So you are capable of emotion, then?" Composure regained, but there is still venom in John's voice. Normally he controls the anger, keeps it out of sight, but today is not one of those days.

"I am sorry, John." The politician is being honest for once, no repellent walls of lies concealing truths any longer. Unspoken went what he wanted to but could not say. (He's still alive. I helped him. He's watching over you, we both are. He had to. He has to stay out of sight to clear his name, and keep you safe. He'll be back, John.)

"Please leave."

Mycroft is a clever man. So similar to and yet so different from his little brother. He knows when he has overstayed his welcome, and exactly how long he can do so for before it ends badly. It is time to leave, truly.

"Good bye, John. Take care."

The door closes behind him and John breaks down. He falls to his knees on the floor, tears running freely from his eyes. His entire body is shaking like a violent fit until there is no more water left that his body can spare to make rivers. He still shivers for hours after his cheeks dry up. When he finally finds the strength to get himself together and off the floor, he settles in the nearest thing, his chair. For a long time he simply sits there, exhausted both emotionally and physically. He hasn't eaten for about three days now, he guesses, eyes still closed. It is beginning to take it's toll. You wouldn't even recognize me any more if you did come back, Sherlock. When he eventually opens them he sees the envelope that Mycroft must have left on the table. He contemplates throwing it away without opening it, but his better judgement (and Sherlock's voice in his head - Well, think about it next time, we could used the money... - Sherlock sitting curled up in the chair opposite him) sees him open the envelope, cursing as he causes himself a paper-cut. His not-really-there genius of a flatmate looks at him with eyes saying "how did you manage that?" before he speaks. "Be more careful, John. I don't like you getting hurt."

The doctor wants to look up, he wants to answer the man he so wishes were really there, but instead he keeps his eyes on the envelope now slightly reddened with his own blood and prays for the hallucination to go away as he opens it all the way. "You know I'm not going anywhere, John. Why are you even trying, you don't even believe in this God you're asking for favours. It's quite silly, really." There is money to last him the month there, as always when Mycroft stops by, but this time there is not only the bank-notes, a little foreign coin also falls out of the envelope as he turns it upside-down. Had he not know the I play a small part in the British government Holmes he would have assumed the coin ended up there by accident, but he is the British government Holmes never had anything happen by accident. The man had never made a mistake his entire life, of that John was sure. The coin was definitely intentional, but why?

"Think, John. Even your average brain can figure this out."

It is so hard for the doctor not to reply, retort like he would have if his flatmate/best friend/not lover was still there. He has to concentrate to not part his lips and speak. He used to think it would get easier with time, but that hope is fading. It has only gotten harder so far, the more time passes the more difficult it becomes to deal with the ghost of someone so dear to him. John is not the dramatic type, he has never wanted to die, but he is not so sure any longer. It is so difficult to keep going without his conductor of light there to pull and push him through the otherwise far too mundane days. He's back to the cane again, the yes, I know it's psychosomatic limp has returned along with the shivering of his hands when he is not under pressure. He needs something to happen, to throw him out of the routine that has been killing him slowly for the past half year.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** So, here it is, a continuation. I am actually going somewhere with this, with an idea about where already (though that is partially owed to some great fics I've been reading here and there), something new for me. I hope you like it, and I'd love if you took the time to review if you like it (or if you really don't). Thank you for the likes and review so far, you're all lovely.

Oh, and sorry the chapters are so short, but I'd rather have them updated regularly and be short than make them longer and keep you waiting. Hope you agree.

Enjoy!

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><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

He wakes up the usual minute before his alarm goes off. He's had the same time set for years, so no wonder his body remembers. He hates the mechanical sound that wakes him if he does not get to it first, so he is only glad to be able to turn it off before it brings out the killer in him.

He sits up, head still clouded by dreams and...

"_Good morning, John. Sleep well?"_

Oh no. This is not a good way to wake up. Not today, when he has to act like everything is fine, nothing out of the ordinary to convince Sarah. He cannot deal with this now. _Please, go away._

"_Use your brain, John, you've got potential to be an observer if only you stop just looking. You haven't figured out the riddle yet."_

No, he hasn't. _I haven't got a clue what this is supposed to mean. _He picks the coin up from his nightstand, flicks it through his fingers and feels the cold metal on his skin. It's a strange little piece of metal, silver in colour with something written on it in Spanish. _Why Spanish?_ As on all coins there is imagery - on this one more specifically a coat of arms, probably the same for all these coins. Still, he thinks, these coins are probably not in use any longer, what with Euros being the most common currency in Europe and all. _I really have no idea..._

Without realizing his closed his eyes while thinking, an old habit picked up on the battlefield for when he had to focus in the midst of the most chaotic situations. When he opens them he is alone in the room, no Sherlock in sight. He goes to the bathroom, showers for a while to get clean, he hasn't bothered for a few days too many now, then gets dressed in his typical manner, trousers and a shirt. A comb through his hair and he's ready to go. _God..._ He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, sees how his cheeks look hollow, how thin he's gotten. _I can't let her see me like this. _He pulls on one of the big, comfy sweater so very _him_ and walks into the kitchen. He should probably eat some breakfast.

A quick look through the fridge and there is nothing edible there unless he were to count the week-old Chinese leftovers that have begun to grow some sort of white and blue fur. _I need to get myself together._ He likes to think it will happen, but in reality he knows he does not have the strength to fix the damage done. Not yet. No food in the apartment, so he grabs his coat and heads out the door.

He meets up with Sarah at a coffee shop close to the office, a little place they used to for lunch when they were dating. She looks amazing, as always, her hair up in a pony-tail, a modest dress under a thing spring coat. She greets him, and he feels her gaze, how she sizes him up and _she can tell. Oh, God, she can tell._ She knows him quite well, can see that all is not right with the man she might still be with if he had not meant danger and heartbreak from the start. She smiles, kind and polite as always, one hand pulling at her pony-tail, the other pulling John in for a hug. He wonders if it is just so that she can get a feel of him, see how thin he really is beneath those clothes. Feel the slight tremor that runs through him. His hands stop shaking. This is pressure, she cannot know just how bad it has gotten. The depth of the darkness that surrounds him. He smiles.

"Hello, Sarah. Good morning?"

"Yeah, quite. They always are when I can sleep in, though. How about yours?" _Not at all. I saw a dead man, he spoke to me._

"Rather good."

They order, coffee for her - tea and a bagel with jam for him as his stomach is about to start making conversation loud enough for the people outside to hear. She seems pleased, he's doing well. They sit down at a corner table, sip their hot beverages in silence for a little while before Sarah breaks the silence.

"You've lost a lot of weight, John. Are you eating well? It's not unusual to respond to grief with food-related behaviours..." He doesn't need to hear this. He knows this. Far too well.

"I... It was rough for a while, but I'm trying to fatten up a bit now a days." He make a move like toasting with the bagel. _See, I'm eating. _

"Good. Good." She doesn't quite believe him, he can tell.

"Hey... You know, I haven't been doing to well lately, I know it's been showing. I wanted to apologize, but I'm getting back on my feet now. It just takes a while, you know?" It's what she wants to hear, and he has no qualms about saying the words however untrue. A charming smile and some weeks of good behaviour and he should be able to get away with how broken he has become.

"It's ok. We understand, but we - I worry about you none the less. I'm glad to hear you're doing better, John. Truly. We need you to be reliable like you used to again, so we can keep you around. We love having you at the office, but it didn't look good for a while." It feels like a punch to his gut, but he swallows it and smiles. Nods.

"Yeah. Yes. No, I completely understand, and I'm sorry I caused so much trouble. I'm getting myself together though, no more of the uncertainty, and... thank you, Sarah." He has a feeling she is the reason why he is still employed, and he owes her for that.

She buys his lies, or chooses to believe _the convenient lie rather than the inconvenient truth_, he doesn't quite know or care which it is. They go to work, a long day of regular, boring cases of the flu and sick children and rashes and such, then it is over and he goes home. Back to the silence, the deafening calm caused by Sherlock being _not there_. The strangeness of not being greeted by gunfire or chemical smoke or strange experiments when he walks through the door to 221 B, Baker street.

The coin. He tries for weeks to understand what it is supposed to mean. It is Spanish, apparently the coin-press is in the part of the country known as Baskerland. If this is a clue, he thinks, to something he should understand or remember, it is related to Baskerville. Still, he does not understand. At any rate this was a thing Sherlock would do - but Mycroft? Why is the man doing this to him? _What reason can he possibly have?_

Days pass in this fashion, then weeks. Suddenly months have flown by, and he does not know where they have gone - cannot seem to find the lost time anywhere. No memories. With Sherlock there was never a dull second, now there is never one to remember.

The older Holmes comes by around the middle of every month, like he has since his little brother jumped of the ledge of St. Barts hospital. Every time he leaves an envelope with money to last John the month, and John takes it even though he does not want to. Ever since the coin there has been a little thing extra with the cash. He now has four total. The items are the coin, a tiny white rabbit figurine, a piece of paper torn from a page that simply reads "web", and a pocket watch.

John cannot understand why this is happening, the strange little things that keep appearing. Has no idea why he is receiving these things, and from Mycroft none the less. This is a thing Sherlock would do, if he were still alive, _but I saw you jump off that building. I saw you fall, and it was so quick, but it took so long before you hit the ground. It was like being back in Afghanistan, watching soldiers dying because there was nothing more I could do for them. Like seeing a man with a weapon pointed straight at me, knowing he'd already fired and feeling the impact immediately after lasting an eternity. That dreadful feeling that I hoped I would never feel again - and you're the person that made me feel it. Then there was just you, cold, on the ground with no pulse and blood pooling from your head and the medics pulling me away and... Oh God, no, I can't think about this. _

The first week after Sherlock... After the incident, he barely slept, and even when he did it was only for hours and no real rest at all. The next week he spent making up for it, sleeping so deeply it was more hibernation than rest. Then came the time for piecing himself together just enough to go on living, learning to stand on his own feet again. That was when the nightmares returned. At first they were like they had been ever since they began, but they got progressively worse until he would wake up with his heart beating two-hundred times per minute, throat sore and sometimes even tear-stained cheeks - his entire body shaking violently on the worst nights, only his hands and his mind on the good ones. He is back at war, only this time it is with himself, not an enemy. It is all Sherlock's fault.

"_You miss me. It's almost embarrassing how obvious it is. You were always the one who cared what people said, John."_

"I know. I do."

He doesn't even realize that he speaks. Dreams and days blur together in this grey fog that his world has become - _not exciting like the Baskerville fog, mind you_. Little by little he started looking up when Sherlock spoke to him, smiling at the familiar words or even sometimes allowing himself to nod or shake his head or react in some other way. One day it simply became too hard to stay silent, so he spoke. Now it happens on a daily basis, but only ever in the apartment. Sherlock hardly ever appears out of the flat, and never in places he would not have been found were he really there - truly alive. John is still able to see the divide between reality and wishful dreams, but they are growing blurred. What separates him from _I'm going insane_ is solely the image of Sherlock falling. The warm feel of the blood on the ground and the memory of how the world fell apart around him when _there was no pulse. You had no pulse. Why did you have to go so far just to prove a point, Sherlock?_

Although it is not, he knows too well, even near legal, he has got his hands on some pills that douse the illusion when it is not appropriate. When is it ever appropriate? When _Sherlock, you cannot be here. You aren't really here, and if I talk to you and you aren't really here and they see me... _He doesn't want to think about it, so he keeps the illusions to himself. Keeps conversations behind closed doors, enclosed by the walls of 221 B, Baker Street. Enclosed by the home that they made together, the only place he had ever _really_ felt was what a home should be. Some place safe, and good. Some place he liked being, where he could escape when the memories became too haunting or feel safe waking up when the dreams were too violent. He had never had such a place before the flat that he shared withthe man that had been his curse and his best friend.

John lets the illusion that he so wishes would come true roam free in the apartment. He allows the figure to become real, in there, for his eyes only. He holds conversations with a ghost, fights with a memory and wakes up feeling safe in the presence of a dream. If nothing else at least the nightmares are fading as the hallucination gets stronger. Sometimes he thinks of it as a good thing, but _maybe there just isn't space in my head for two diseases, two different kinds of hell. _That is what Sherlock has become to him - his hell.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN**: Sorry it's taking me long to update this, there's just quite a lot going on lately. Anyway, hope you're enjoying it - and please tell me if there's anything you like, don't like or, well, anything else, really. =)

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

A coin, a pocket watch, "Web", and a tiny white rabbit figurine. If these are clues, John thinks, and they must be because _what else could it possibly mean_. The coin from a Baskerland coin-press is pointing to Baskerville.

"_Obviously_."

"Yeah, yeah. We can't all be at your level, Sherlock."

The first round is just a warm-up, nothing too difficult. _Well played, Sherl..._ He catches himself mid-though, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Sherlock cannot have been the one to leave these mysteries or clues or whatever they are for him. There is no Sherlock any longer, because the worlds only cosulting detective is gone, and he won't ever return no matter how many times John looks to the door thinking he'll see him standing there in his coat and scarf.

A pocket watch. Working. Ticking away one second at a time. It seems old, but is in perfect condition. Decorated with old-fashioned engravements, but nothing that might give him a clue as to what it meant. Still. A watch. Time, John thought. He still does, and it only became stronger with the most recent trinket.

"Web". The third clue. He still did not know what it meant, so he rather put all his effort into analyzing and deducing every bit of information the little torn-off piece of paper could offer him, hoping a later clue might help unravel the mystery. What he had found so far was that it was torn from a dictionary - more specifically the Merriam _Web_ster Dictionary. It could have been referring to quite a few different words, the note being torn off closely behind the last letter, but looking closely john discovered that there was just a little too much space. The word was "Web", nothing more and nothing less. Web. Noun. The word has many definitions. 1: A fabrick on a loom or in process of being removed from a loom; 2: a: Cobweb, Spiderweb. b: a network of silken thread spun especially by the larvae of various insects (as a tent caterpillar) and usually serving as a nest or shelter; 3: A tissue of membrane of an animal or plant; especially... He could list them all by now, having read them so very many times. Some were most likely completely irrelevant; the rest seemed strange to him, but were at least more likely to varying degrees.

The white rabbit, last. White rabbits, there were plenty of things it could be pointing to, he thought at first. Alice in Wonderland, pulling the rabbit out of the hat, Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas (Wing Commander, British Special Operations Executive), 17942 Whiterabbit (an asteroid discovered May 11th, 1999), White Rabbit/Cultivator No. 6 (a tranch-digging device invented by the Roal British Navy at the beginning of World War II). Then started the elimination process. At first he had been completely stuck, thinking it must be pertaining to something he would know because of who he is, a military man. The related pieces of information got him nowhere, and he was forced to start over. Sherlock had tried to teach him, rather unsuccessfully, to _observe, John_. He had been terrible at it, never breaching the surface, but faced with all clues and only one answer he remembered every detail of what the man had told him, and he racked his brain for anything that would help. Sherlock had had a _mind-palace, _as he called it. John was not so grand, and settled for something smaller; a mind-apartment. A replica of their - the apartment mapped out in his mind. It took him some time, three weeks passed without an answer, but eventually he found what he was looking for, the right memory. A conversation. The last conversation. He hated having to recall it, all the words he would not let himself believe to be true, the pain caused by remembering them. Still, he had, trying to find out where to go next.

"_I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you..." A pause. Too long. Why? It wasn't like him to speak with those kinds of pauses, rather just saying it all in one go. "It's a trick. It's just a magic trick."_

The white rabbit, a magic trick. His best friend had stood there on a ledge, right before he jumped, saying all he was had only been a magic trick, a lie, a fraud. John hadn't believed a word of it. He knew the man standing on the roof-top ready to jump, and he was not a liar. Not until that day. Thinking about it makes his hands tremble, the images called to mind of a broken and bleeding body on the pavement not making it any better. The nightmares will be bad tonight, he finds himself thinking. It's just a magic trick. _What_ is just a magic trick? He wonders for a second how Mycroft could possibly know about the conversation, but then remembers that the remaining Holmes practically _is _the Government, and it is no surprise any longer.

Just a couple of days left now before his next visit from the older brother of his ghost, and a new clue. They are what he lives for these days, but he tells no one of them, does not dare to speak of the joy they give him, the faint hope ignited in his heart that maybe, somehow, Sherlock is still alive... Only - he can't be. John saw him jump. Saw him fall and watched his blood pool around his head. He cannot allow himself to even hope.

"_But you do, don't you, John? You do hope that I'm still alive. That somehow I survived that jump and that all these clues are coming your way because of me and that one day I'll come back through that door."_

"I do. God, Sherlock, I miss you. So much. I don't know what I'm doing without you. Life's so dull now."

"_You can't blame life for being Dull. Life is just an excuse we give to where our actions have lead us. Life won't be anything you don't make it. Why don't you try looking for some excitement if that's what you want?"_

"I don't know how. Where I'd begin. I'm... All my adult life I've been surrounded by chaos and excitement and all these things, but it's never been on my own account. Trouble has always found me, it was never the other way around. I don't know where to look, Sherlock."

The discussion goes on, taking a turn for the mundane. Day-to-day topics and memories and have-beens and such. It gets late, and John feels the drowsiness seep through his flesh and settle into his bones, so he goes to bed leaving Sherlock sitting on the couch. When he lays down and begins drifting off to sleep he hears something he hasn't for so long. Something he has missed so terribly. He hears the beautiful tones of Sherlock's violin dancing from the strings into the air, lulling him to sleep. _I must be going insane_, he thinks. When he wakes up he is not sweaty or shaking. His throat is not soar from screaming, and there are no scratches on his skin from trying to wake himself up. For the first time in more than ten months, he wakes up and actually feels good and rested. It terrifies him.

A couple of days pass, the nightmares return and he tries to avoid speaking to his mirage, and it is time for a new letter. Another clue. He doesn't immediately shoo Mycroft out the door like normal this time, rather invites him in for tea and a chat. They sit in silence for a while, John in his regular chair, Mycroft in the one that is now mainly a symbol of the emptiness the soldier feels. The pleasantries and how are you's and anything new's are already used, no crutches to support them selves on to start a conversation. The older of the two breaks the silence clearing his throat.

"Dr. Watson," his voice is calm and controlled as always, "why am I still here?"

"What?" John looks up, having been entirely enveloped in his own little world and confused at being woken from it.

"You know what I mean." It is true. There is a motive.

"The clues - things - whatever they are..." John doesn't quite know how to phrase himself, feels horribly inarticulate and a little embarrased. What if they're nothing - or worse yet, if Mycroft is just doing his own experiment with John as the test-subject, _like Sherlock used to._

"What ever are you talking about?" Mycroft is not giving anything away. The way he speaks, John isn't sure if he actually doesn't know or if he is simply taunting him.

"The coin," John says, "and the watch, and web and the white rabbit. You must know what I'm talking about, Mycroft - they all came in the envelopes you left.

"I'm deeply sorry, but I do not know what you speak of." He takes a pocket-watch _it's so similar to the one lying on my bedside table_ out of his right pocket, glances at it quickly and gets up. "Do please excuse my manners, leaving so abruptly, but something has come up and I have to go. I will be seeing you, Dr. Watson."

"It's John."

"What?"

"I prefer John, not Dr. Watson."

"Goodbye, John. See you later."

With that, _the most dangerous man you will ever meet_ walks out the door, and John listens to his steps disappear down the stairs as he tries to figure out the meaning of the conversation they just had. There is nothing in what the man said that gives him a single clue - but the watch Mycroft had taken up was so similar to that which John had received a couple of months ago- There is a connection, he thinks, _I just have to find it_.

The second the footsteps become inaudible, he grabs the envelope and opens it quickly - he would tear it open, but doesn't want to harm whatever may be inside - but there is nothing. _Nothing? _He doesn't know how to interpret the unexpected turn of events, sitting in his chair with an envelope full of money and _why is there nothing else_? He does not understand - cannot. Has this all just been a cruel game from Mycroft's side, and if so why? Maybe he has imagined the little strange things as well, he could be crazier than he thought he was. If Mycroft was telling the truth and really knows nothing about the trinquets, _which is impossible if they're really there, I must be doing even worse than I though. _If he's started seeing not only Sherlock, but begun inventing signs that the man is still alive... Without really thinking it through he goes to his bedroom and finds the pocket-watch _because it's less strange than the other things_ and walks down the stairs, knocking on Mrs. Hudson's door before he enters.

"What is it, dear?" She's worried about him. Always, it seems, and maybe more rightfully now than ever.

"I was just wondering," he says, _where do I go from this, _his plan is rather lacking in afterthought, "could you take a look at this for me, Mrs. Hudson." He hands her the pocket-watch,quickly tries to find a reason why he needs her to see it, not noticing the troubled expression that comes to her face.

"What am I looking for, John, dear?"

"It's got an engravement if you open it up, I just wondered if you recognize it. I'm sure I've seen it before, but I can't remember where."

She holds the watch in her hand, studying the pattern for a while, holding it up to eye-lever for a better view. After what John estimates to be around half a minute _could just as easily have been a year, waiting for my judgement_ she hands it back to him with a sad smile.

"Well, I don't know where you might have seen it before John, I'm sorry, but I can tell you that the watch belonged to Sherlock. I take it you didn't know, or I suppose you wouldn't come asking, you're too nice for that. Oh, excuse me, I must be making no sense to you at all. You see, that watch was my husband's, and it was the only thing Sherlock would have as pay for putting him away for me... He was such a lovely lad."

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hudson."

A little more chat passes between the two of them before John retreats back up to the apartment, guilt-wrecked after realizing the look on his landlady's face as he left.


End file.
